Tag / freeze

This video from Danny Bonnici is a good quick reminder on how to Flatten a Frozen track and archive a project for later use or to send to someone to remix. Whenever I am 100% finished with a song I do exactly this process, zip the project folder and save it in a few places. Remember a few years, computers, DAWs and Operating Systems down the road chances are some of your plug-ins won’t work. Convert them to audio before it’s too late.

“When tracks are frozen, the audio les that are created are 32 bit, which ensures that they will not be lower quality than the audio heard prior to freezing. Please note that the Flatten command replaces any original clips and devices with the audio les created by freezing.” – Ableton Live User Manual

I like weird effects and instruments and Time Freezer from Mark Lingk fits the bill. Both the insert plug-in and instrument allow you to freeze any audio in real time. Once you have a frozen piece of sound playing you can shape it using a bandpass filter, pitch control and de-noiser. There are mono and stereo versions. Intelligently there is a internal clipless maximizer. There is nothing as crappy sounding as plug-ins clipping in the digital realm.

The instrument version lets you morph to the next “hold”. Basically it’s applying crossfades between times you hit the “Freeze” pad. Take a listen to Time Freezer in action:

For those of you with Ableton Live you can get a similar effect using Live’s built in Reverb. Crank up the decay time, scream something and hit the Freeze button! Reverb’s aren’t the only effects that sometimes have this function. For example, Propellorhead’s Reason BV512 Vocoder has a Hold button which also freezes audio in time. If you own Reason you should really try it out as it sounds uber wicked.